In a special called ‘Paying at the Pump,’ Governor Sarah Palin and I are extremely concerned about the gasoline crisis in America. It’s an energy crisis that threatens our fragile economy at a time most Americans cannot afford it. The gas price spike affects every single American in ways you would never think of. That’s why we decided to offer the Obama administration our help. Combined, Governor Palin and I have five decades of experience in energy, and we will offer the administration some actionable steps they might take to save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. But, will they listen? Will they act or let the American people suffer more pain at the pump? Don’t forget to tune in Friday at 10p ET.

In an exclusive interview to Breitbart News, Sarah Palin discussed energy policy and her Fox News Special (with Eric Bolling) “Paying at the Pump,” which airs tonight on FNC at 10pm ET. The program will re-air on Saturday and Sunday. She also touched on some other topics of the day…

You already know to stay tuned to JUST Piper for a live comment event if/when things turn threatening…

Apr. 13, 201:,NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center warns of a high risk of severe weather in portions of Kansas and Oklahoma on Saturday, April 14. According to forecasters, there is a 60 percent chance of tornadoes, high wind and hail within 25 miles of a point in an area from Salina, Kan., to Oklahoma City.

Four-foot drifts of golf-ball-sized hail hit Texas

Hailstones the size of golf balls or ping-pong balls built up into 4-foot-deep drifts in a sparsely populated region of Potter County, Tex., after a slow-moving thunderstorm drifted over the Texas panhandle.

Potter County Fire Dept. ~ Apr. 11, 2012: A firefighter stands near a shoulder-deep wall of hail, water and ice following storms in northern Potter County, TX.

‘We could see baseball-sized hail, maybe even softball-sized. That’s not out of the realm of possibility.’

– Justyn Jackson, meteorologist

Questions about the incredible images of ping-pong ball sized stones forming a four-foot deep wall on the Texas panhandle were answered Friday when the National Weather Service declared them legitimate — with a warning that you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Baseball- or even softball-sized hail could hit the South this weekend, NWS officials warned Friday.

“I do think we’ll see larger hail over the next couple days,” Justyn Jackson, a meteorologist with the Amarillo, Tex., Weather Forecast Office, told FoxNews.com. “It’s possible that we could maybe see baseball-sized hail, maybe even softball-sized. That’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

“We think it’s going to be east of our area — Oklahoma, Kansas, those areas,” Jackson said.

Friends, this is exactly what happened last April. God Speed to those in these high Torcon areas and stay tuned to JUS Piper for all instant updates as they happen! I tweet warnings as soon as they come in within seconds.

TO THE WEST: SPC has issued a rare “high risk” of severe weather for parts of Oklahoma and Kansas tomorrow, calling it a “high end, life threatening situation”. Pretty scary wording. No doubt the players are on the field, but we won’t really know the mesoscale setup until tomorrow at midday. Needless to say, all of our friends across the Southern Plains will be on high alert.

Thanks to Dr. Gina I have signed up for this from Bill Federer. We will be adding the javascript to JUST Piper . For today I bring you today’s American Minute:

He drafted the Declaration of Independence, was Governor of Virginia and founded the University of Virginia.

As the 3rd U.S. President, he approved the Louisiana Purchase and had Lewis and Clark explore it.

He sent the Marines to stop the Muslim Barbary Pirates of Tripoli.

His name was Thomas Jefferson, born APRIL 13, 1743.

Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC are his words:

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

In his Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786, Jefferson wrote:

“Almighty God hath created the mind free…All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments…tend only to begat habits of hypocrisy…and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone.”

In his 2nd Inaugural, Jefferson wrote:

“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.”

Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston), the Democrat chair of the Maine legislature’s Moderate Caucus, used his Twitter account to express his view that former Vice President Dick Cheney should be executed. This comment has led some to question the validity of Kruger’s moderate credentials.

Kruger made the statement through his Twitter account this past summer, saying, “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams,” a reference to technology that would allow Kruger to watch the proposed execution of the former Vice President of the United States.

Kruger made the statement through his Twitter account this past summer, saying, “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams,” a reference to technology that would allow Kruger to watch the proposed execution of the former Vice President of the United States.

Kruger’s statement is being viewed as anything but civil.

“This is a profoundly disturbing thing for an elected official who represents the good people of Maine to say about another former or current elected official,” said Jason Savage, Executive Director of Maine People Before Politics.

UPDATE 4/12 8:42am:

In a phone call with The Maine Wire, Kruger claimed he didn’t remember posting the Twitter comment.

“I’m not admitting or denying it,” said Kruger.”I don’t wish anybody’s death, that’s not really how I feel. I can be snarky, I can be a wise-ass.”

Kruger acknowledged that the comments were extreme, and seemed to conflict with his position with the Moderate Caucus. But, he said, there is “no connection between [the] tweet and my actions or positions in the legislature”

Kruger’s Twitter history was removed from public view after we contacted him for this story.

We are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of liberty which is ours as American citizens. To be Catholic and American should mean not having to choose one over the other. Our allegiances are distinct, but they need not be contradictory, and should instead be complementary. That is the teaching of our Catholic faith, which obliges us to work together with fellow citizens for the common good of all who live in this land. That is the vision of our founding and our Constitution, which guarantees citizens of all religious faiths the right to contribute to our common life together.

Religious Liberty Under Attack—Concrete Examples

Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat? Sadly, it is. This is not a theological or legal dispute without real world consequences. Consider the following:

NOTE: These are JUST snippets, link to full letter at end of post.

* HHS mandate for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. The mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services has received wide attention and has been met with our vigorous and united opposition. In an unprecedented way, the federal government will both force religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport to define which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit protection of their religious liberty.

* State immigration laws. Several states have recently passed laws that forbid what the government deems “harboring” of undocumented immigrants—and what the Church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to those immigrants. Perhaps the most egregious of these is in Alabama, where the Catholic bishops, in cooperation with the Episcopal and Methodist bishops of Alabama, filed suit against the law:

It is with sadness that we brought this legal action but with a deep sense that we, as people of faith, have no choice but to defend the right to the free exercise of religion granted to us as citizens of Alabama. . . . The law makes illegal the exercise of our Christian religion which we, as citizens of Alabama, have a right to follow. The law prohibits almost everything which would assist an undocumented immigrant or encourage an undocumented immigrant to live in Alabama. This new Alabama law makes it illegal for a Catholic priest to baptize, hear the confession of, celebrate the anointing of the sick with, or preach the word of God to, an undocumented immigrant. Nor can we encourage them to attend Mass or give them a ride to Mass. It is illegal to allow them to attend adult scripture study groups, or attend CCD or Sunday school classes. It is illegal for the clergy to counsel them in times of difficulty or in preparation for marriage. It is illegal for them to come to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings or other recovery groups at our churches

* Altering Church structure and governance. In 2009, the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut Legislature proposed a bill that would have forced Catholic parishes to be restructured according to a congregational model, recalling the trusteeism controversy of the early nineteenth century, and prefiguring the federal government’s attempts to redefine for the Church “religious minister” and “religious employer” in the years since.

* Christian students on campus.In its over-100-year history, the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.

* Catholic foster care and adoption services. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the state of Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.

* Discrimination against small church congregations. New York City enacted a rule that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and sixty other churches from renting public schools on weekends for worship services even though non-religious groups could rent the same schools for scores of other uses. While this would not frequently affect Catholic parishes, which generally own their own buildings, it would be devastating to many smaller congregations. It is a simple case of discrimination against religious believers.

* Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services. Notwithstanding years of excellent performance by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require us to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching.

Religious Liberty Is More Than Freedom of Worship

Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans. Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith? Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, deprived of the essential contribution in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that religious Americans make every day, both here at home and overseas.

What is at stake is whether America will continue to have a free, creative, and robust civil society—or whether the state alone will determine who gets to contribute to the common good, and how they get to do it. Religious believers are part of American civil society, which includes neighbors helping each other, community associations, fraternal service clubs, sports leagues, and youth groups. All these Americans make their contribution to our common life, and they do not need the permission of the government to do so. Restrictions on religious liberty are an attack on civil society and the American genius for voluntary associations.

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America issued a statement about the administration’s contraception and sterilization mandate that captured exactly the danger that we face:

Most troubling, is the Administration’s underlying rationale for its decision, which appears to be a view that if a religious entity is not insular, but engaged with broader society, it loses its “religious” character and liberties. Many faiths firmly believe in being open to and engaged with broader society and fellow citizens of other faiths. The Administration’s ruling makes the price of such an outward approach the violation of an organization’s religious principles. This is deeply disappointing.

This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.

A Fortnight for Freedom

In particular, we recommend to our brother bishops that we focus “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” in a special way this coming summer. As pastors of the flock, our privileged task is to lead the Christian faithful in prayer.

We suggest that the fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, be dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country. Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action would emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty. Dioceses and parishes around the country could choose a date in that period for special events that would constitute a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty.

We invite you to join us in an urgent prayer for religious liberty.
Almighty God, Father of all nations,
For freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:1).
We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty,
the foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.
Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties;
By your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness,
and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
with whom you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Back up the bus! After bouncing Hilary Rosen beneath the Greyhound, President Obama and friends might have to throw it in reverse again over the person of key Dem coalitioin member Terry O’Neill. The NOW president suggested to Ed Schultz tonight that Ann Romney, along with Mitt, lacks “life experience” and “imagination” needed to understand most Americans.

April 2009 ZoBama Express:

For good measure, in the very same segment Dem congresswoman Maxine Waters called the Republican candidate for president Mitt “Rot-ney.” Classy bunch! View the video after the jump.

Toure, the self-proclaimed racial expert, has a new column at Time today in which he explains that the election of Barack Obama has made white people violently mad. “Historically,” he writes, “after a surge in black power there is a retort, a reassertion of white power. After emancipation and Reconstruction came Jim Crow. After the Civil Rights Movement came the rise of mass incarceration, which Professor Michelle Alexander calls ‘the New Jim Crow’ because legalized discrimination against ex-convicts means that they lose all the rights won in the Civil Rights Movement.”

So far, so stupid.

Toure’s right that after emancipation and Reconstruction, the South was largely left to its own devices, and quickly instituted Jim Crow. But that was a reaction not to increased black power but to the North’s failure to carry forward Reconstruction. The South never accepted the Union victory and decided, “Hey, let’s treat black folks with dignity.” They simply waited for the Northerners to go away. As far as the supposed “mass incarceration,” that would be incarceration of criminals, both white and black, who forfeit rights when they commit felonies. Portraying the rise in crime after the Civil Rights Movement as a failure of white folks who just wanted to smack down the black man is insulting and absurd.

But then Toure gets to the real point of his article: George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin, and the racially-motivated shooting spree of Jacob England and Alvin Watts in Tulsa represent the backlash to Obama:

Now in the wake of the rise of Obama, we see the power structure responding by continuing to implement voter ID laws tailored to functionally disenfranchise poor blacks. We see an increase in violent crimes that target blacks but not specific blacks, any black person will do. So we get people driving cars into blacks in Mississippi and now this in Tulsa. These violent manifestations of hate are not isolated incidents.

The anxiety about Obama’s success has led to many reactions, most of them not physical but still emotionally violent.

This is patently insane.

White people elected Obama. Statistically speaking, 54% of young white voters went for Obama; 43% of white people total voted for him, 4% more than voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, 1% more than Gore in 2000, and 2% more than Kerry in 2004. Obama essentially recreated Clinton’s coalition, including a larger percentage of white voters than any non-incumbent Democrat since Carter.

But angry white people are apparently wandering the streets looking for black people to beat up. Never mind that George Zimmerman is a registered Democrat. Never mind that federally-investigated anti-black hate crime victims dropped precipitously when Obama became president, from nearly 3,600 victims in 2008 to about 2,900 in 2009, to 2,765 in 2010.

This isn’t about some supposed upswing in racist hatred from white Americans. This is all about politics for Toure and his ilk, who seek to make the case that dislike of Obama is dislike of blacks more generally. The implication: if you don’t support Obama, you’re a racist. You’re a softer version of Jacob England. Sure, you don’t pick up a gun and murder black people. But you would vote against Obama, wouldn’t you?

~ So, Obama has NOTHING to say while the DOJ is trying to trump up a ‘hate crime’ on Zimmerman. Obama has nothing to say about how dangerous White Supremacists are but they race bait with it. I see this as plain & simple race baiting on this administration. The silence from this administration speaks volumes as to their agenda IMO. What do you see? ~ JP

Restoring Love event taking place July 26th through July 28th in Dallas, Texas. On the 26th, visitors will register for the event as well as meet and greet people from across the country. The 27th is a day of service in which everyone can lend a helping hand to the surrounding community. Then on the 28th, the event will conclude with a finale that is hosted at Dallas Cowboy Stadium! We hope to see you soon!